Celebrity news from Marilyn Beck and Stacy Jenel Smith

Tag Archives: “Leverage”

Timothy Hutton’s character in TNT’s ‘Leverage’ will be cleaning up his act again as the third season of the show gets underway.

Hutton, who leads a team of expert criminals in the Robin Hood-style adventure yarn, will be leaving his alcoholism behind when the third season of the show launches on June 20. Says the actor of his Nathan Ford character, ‘Last season he tried to give up drinking, but it didn’t last. This season he’s definitely off the bottle. In the past he would deal with his problems by going back on the bottle. Now he wants to be a good leader and to stay sober.’

How long that will last is questionable. Says Timothy, ‘Some mysterious figure comes out of the shadow about a month into the new season, and that might unravel Nate again. He’s a person Nate would rather not see and he plays such a big part in the story that the show is trying to keep his story a secret for now.’

Hutton recently won a Prism Award for his accurate depiction of a character that’s been described in the past as ‘a functioning alcoholic.’

Asked why he feels so many of the lead characters on TV series (‘Nurse Jackie,’ ‘Breaking Bad,’ ‘House,’ etc.) are flawed, he notes, ‘It’s a reflection of life — people can identify with such problems. They’re the same issues regular people go through.’

Timothy Hutton was glad to hear the news that Roman Polanski’s “Ghost Writer” will premiere at the Berlin Film Festival in February — despite the fact Polanski remains under house arrest in Switzerland awaiting extradition to the U.S. on his 1978 conviction for having unlawful sex with a 13-year-old girl. But, Hutton wasn’t surprised.

The embattled director continued to supervise post-production work on his latest movie when he was imprisoned near Zurich, as well as when he was allowed to return to his Swiss chalet.

“I knew looping and sound work had been done with the different actors and it was on track to come out next year,” Hutton says. “I don’t know the details of how the film has been worked on, but I’m sure that he’s involved with every aspect of it, every detail.”

Hutton plays an American lawyer representing the British prime minister in the feature. The adaptation of Robert Harris’ novel, it’s about a writer recruited to help a disgraced PM (said to be a thinly-veiled Tony Blair) produce his memoirs against the backdrop of a possible indictment at the international criminal court. Pierce Brosnan and Ewan McGregor play the prime minister and the writer, respectively.

“I think it’s going to be a really terrific film,” Hutton says.

Hutton was, of course, stunned when Polanski was arrested last September. “I mean, yeah, it was just a few months before we were all working on the film,” he notes. As for his feelings on the matter? “All I care to say about it is that I had a really great experience working on the film.”

Hutton is due to return to the cameras for Season 3 production of his terrific TNT “Leverage” series in March. The show, in which he plays the mastermind of a group of tech-savvy con artists who employ their skills to bring down bad guys, returns to the lineup Jan. 13. First, time off with his sons, ages eight and 22, and “the cousins are coming up to my house in upstate New York. We’re hoping to get up to one of the local ski areas. A couple of the kids have never skied.”

THE VIDEOLAND VIEW: Jana Kramer tells us she loves her gig as the newest bad girl, Alex, on the CW’s “One Tree Hill,” but adjusting to life in North Carolina hasn’t been as easy. She’s especially missing being with her boyfriend Johnathon Schaech, who she met when the two filmed “Prom Night” together.

“It’s totally a different world out here in Wilmington. I was like, ‘Where’s the town?’ And, they said, ‘This is the town.’ I’m like, ‘It’s only five blocks!’ I fly back to L.A. when I can to spend time with my boyfriend. It’s hard, though. I’m so tired of being in an airplane,” she says. “My boyfriend was just in the country Georgia, so that was really difficult because he was gone for three months. Now that he’s back in L.A. it’s a lot easier.”

Luckily, the cast has become like a second family to Kramer. “I was really nervous when I first came on board because everybody’s been on this show for seven years now. I was worried in particular about Sophia [Bush], because you never know how girls are, and this being primarily her show, but she was extremely welcoming. Sophia, Lisa and I hang out all the time. Everybody’s pretty close because you kind of have to be, since most of our friends are in L.A.”

Now, Kramer just hopes the long-running show has a little more steam left in it. “We just keep crossing our fingers. Hopefully, it sticks around a couple of more years because I just got on the show. It’d be nice to have something steady and to have more time to explore the character, but I’ve learned to never get your hopes up in this business because things change so quickly.”

INDUSTRY BITS: The Russell Brand-Jonah Hill “Get Him to the Greek” shot last summer, but they’re adding new material to the feature expected in June, with production to commence mid-January. Among the parts being cast are a newscaster and two beautiful and sexy girls, one of whom will be required to go topless.

“Greek” has Brand reprising his Aldous Hill, wayward rock legend, role from “Forgetting Sarah Marshall” with Hill as the record company intern charged with getting him to show up to perform his own comeback concert.

Casting is underway for a pilot presentation for a new reality-style TV drama called “Nowhere Home,” following the lives of four runaway teenagers — three girls and a guy, ages 13 to 18. Let us hope the producers don’t choose to glamorize their lives.

Timothy Hutton, in the midst of filming his second season of TNT’s “Leverage” in Portland, Oregon, is combining business with fatherhood.

His seven-year-old son Milo, by Hutton’s current wife, French illustrator Aurore Giscard d’Estaing, attends school in Paris, but will be spending the summer with his dad in Portland.So will 22-year-old son Noah, Tim’s son by actress Debra Winger.Noah has just graduated college as an art history major.According to Tim, Milo wants to be Indiana Jones.Neither son has any interest in acting — and Tim might not be too disappointed about that.

As the son ofthe late actor Jim Hutton, Tim learned early “That an acting career has a lot of ups and down.You make a movie that does well, but then, unexpectedly, a rough spot comes along.”

He, of course, couldn’t have hit it much bigger than he did when he received a Best Supporting Actor Oscar at age 20 for his remarkable work as Conrad Jarrett in “Ordinary People.”Within the next few years, he would star in such hit films as “Taps” and “The Falcon and the Snowman.”But there was also the 1983 “Daniel” for Sidney Lumet. “That was a great movie, but no one seemed to want to see it. It’s one of the things in this business you can’t control, but you have to move on.”And move on Hutton has.

Since “Ordinary People,” he has been featured in 36 features, starred in three TV series and has been in dozens of television movies and specials.

“There’s as lot you can’t do anything about,” notes Hutton.“You never know when a rough patch is coming.You’ve just got to keep yourself ready, and maintain a good work ethic.”

Handy advice to his sons — regardless of whatever career they choose to follow.